


words too small for hope (the tell me you’re not miserable remix)

by darlingargents



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Amnesia, Childhood Trauma, Getting Together, Guilt, M/M, Polyamory, Remix, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-26
Updated: 2020-09-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:35:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26533705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/pseuds/darlingargents
Summary: Bill comes home.Or, Georgie lived.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Georgie Denbrough/Eddie Kaspbrak, Georgie Denbrough/Eddie Kaspbrak
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14
Collections: Derry Remixed 2020





	words too small for hope (the tell me you’re not miserable remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scorpiod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/gifts).
  * Inspired by [the stone inside you hasn’t hit bottom yet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23538682) by [scorpiod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/pseuds/scorpiod). 



> Both parts of the title from Richard Siken poems (first from The Torn Up Road, second from Seaside Improvisation.) This fic is a remix of scorpiod's lovely Eddie/Georgie fic.
> 
> This is set eight years after scorpiod's fic and about thirteen years after the first movie.

Over half a decade after he left Derry, Bill gets a phone call. He’s twenty-six, he’s just published his third novel, and the film rights have been acquired for his first. He hasn’t thought about home, or his family, in years.

Until he picks up the phone, he hasn’t thought about Georgie once since maybe his second year of college.

“Bill Denbrough speaking,” he says, and is caught off guard by the sounds of heavy breathing, as if someone on the other end of the line is struggling to keep it together. “Are you—”

“It’s Georgie,” says the voice on the other end of the line, and Bill’s world tilts. He grabs the side of his head, just holding on, trying not to scream.

Georgie. His brother, his brother that he forgot, that he left behind—

“Dad died,” Georgie says, and the spinning world goes still, and stops completely.

Bill is single, and he quit his job at the local Blockbuster last year when he hit a hundred thousand sales, so there’s nothing tying him down to his apartment in LA. He books a flight, packs his most important shit, and gets the first flight he can to Maine.

Vicious migraines have accompanied the buried memories assaulting him. They’re still blurry and out of focus, not quite able to be pieced together, but they’re coming. He can feel them, and it’s a terror he’s never felt before. He finds himself stuttering when he calls Georgie back, twenty minutes before he’s going to leave for the airport.

“M-my flight lands at s-s-seven f-fifteen,” he says, and bites down on his tongue, hard, trying to snap his brain back into form. He hasn’t stuttered since high school. He’s half expecting brotherly mocking, but Georgie just sounds tired.

“In Bangor? I’ll pick you up.” He pauses, as if he’s thinking of adding something, and then says, “I’m sorry I had to tell you like this.”

Tears prick at the corners of Bill’s eyes. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”

“Don’t be,” Georgie says. “You got out.”

Bill doesn’t know what to say to that, so he hangs up. And then he cries, real tears, for maybe the first time since he left home.

The flight is full of nightmares.

It’s a midday flight, but Bill falls asleep anyway, sometime between getting a cup of water and being offered a refill. His dreams feature endless labyrinths underground, red balloons, and a little boy in the middle of the street, bleeding out and screaming and screaming and screaming.

He wakes up sweating, his heart pounding, and has to lock himself in the plane bathroom to stop hyperventilating.

The memories won’t connect yet, like there’s a block in his mind. He knows the little boy on the street was Georgie, but not how Georgie lost his arm; he knows that he was in those tunnels, but not why. There’s something in the middle of all this that he just can’t remember, and it hurts when he tries, a pressure like something sharp being slowly pushed into his skull.

Bill spits bile into the toilet and rinses out his mouth with the water that it specifically says not to drink. If he dies, he won’t sue.

Georgie is waiting outside the airport, and Bill is so relieved at immediately recognizing him that he pulls him into a hug, maybe a bit too fast. Georgie laughs a little and pulls away, and Bill looks him over. He’s a little taller than Bill now, which is shocking. His hair is a little nicer, his bangs naturally parting in the middle and showing off his face. And he’s missing an arm, but Bill doesn’t notice for a moment, because he has a replacement prosthetic. It looks futuristic, almost sci-fi. Georgie catches him staring and laughs a little as he takes Bill’s suitcase.

“I finally found a way to buy it a couple years out of high school,” he says as he opens the trunk of the car and lifts Bill’s suitcase in. Bill resists offering help. “It’s not quite the real thing, but it helps. Do you want to eat or should we just go straight back?”

“Let’s go home,” Bill says, and something flashes in Georgie’s eyes.

_ Home. _

He hadn’t realized it, but he hasn’t felt at home in years.

The hour long drive from the Bangor airport to Derry is mostly quiet. Bill is bursting with questions, about Georgie’s life, about what he’s missed. He is suddenly feeling the weight of being a big brother who has lost his younger brother completely. So completely that he forgot he even had one.

It’s not a great thing to realize.

That, and his headache is intensifying the closer they get to Derry. Memories trying to burst out of him. He leans his head against the cool window and tries to breathe.

“So,” he says when they’re maybe fifteen minutes out, desperate to fill the silence, “are you married? D-Dating?”

Georgie is silent for so long that Bill is worried he misjudged by asking. Like he just had a terrible breakup or something. Bill opens one eye and looks over at Georgie, who is chewing his bottom lip, the fingers of his flesh hand tapping on the steering wheel.

“Actually,” Georgie finally says, “we should probably talk about that.”

Well, that’s never a good sign. Bill lifts his head, wincing at the throbbing pain that shoots through it as he moves. “Did you get s-someone p-p-pregnant already?” he asks. “Because I wouldn’t be mad, just d-disappointed.”

“Hilarious.” Georgie rolls his eyes, and Bill is grateful that at least they can still joke. “Uh, no. It’s… I’ve been dating someone since high school and we’ve moved in together.”

“Oh.” Bill probably shouldn’t be surprised that his little brother is so much more successful in relationships than he is, but it still stings a little. “You haven’t p-popped the question yet?”

Georgie very deliberately focuses on the road, the headlights against the dark. “Can’t. Actually.”

It takes Bill maybe thirty seconds to put the pieces together. “Oh.  _ Oh _ .”

Georgie nods.

“Your… your b-b-b-boyfriend.”

“Yes.”

“Wow.” It’s not something Bill had ever guessed about him. Although, to be fair, Georgie was still a kid when he left, really. And Bill knows he’d been in his own world, obsessed with his own teenage problems, uninterested in anything to do with his kid brother. No wonder he missed it. “I’m happy for you. R-Really.”

Georgie winces. “Look — you’re not going to like who it is.”

“As long as they aren’t tw-twenty years older, I’m sure it’s fine.” Georgie doesn’t respond, and Bill’s blood runs cold. “They aren’t, right? You started d-dating in  _ high school— _ ”

“No, no. Not twenty years. A few years, though.” The headlights flash against the  _ Welcome to Derry _ sign, and Bill feels his whole body go cold for just a moment, like someone walked over his grave. They’re not far from the house, now. “Look, I should probably just let you guys talk. Just… don’t judge, okay? At least go in with an open mind.”

“Of c-course I will. Who do you think I am?”

Georgie doesn’t respond. In fairness, maybe they don’t really know each other all that well. They don’t know each other as adults at all.

Georgie’s house is only a few streets over from the house they grew up in. Two stories, small, and even in the dark Bill can see that the yard is a little overgrown. Through the front window, he can see the living room and into the kitchen, and movement. Someone is cooking.

“I’ll get your bag,” Georgie says, not leaving Bill a choice. Bill watches as he takes it out with his flesh arm and locks the car with the fob in his prosthetic hand. He gestures for Bill to go first, and Bill makes his way up the path and up the short flight of stairs to the front door. It’s red, with the house numbers painted in black.

Georgie is still behind him, so Bill opens the door and steps in. It smells like spaghetti sauce, garlic, and something faintly medicinal, under all of that. He’s trying to figure out the underlying smell when Georgie closes the door behind him and kicks off his shoes.

“Hey,” he calls out as he puts Bill’s suitcase down and heads around the corner into the kitchen.

“How was the drive?” says a maddeningly familiar voice. Bill stops in the middle of taking his shoes off. He can’t quite place it, can’t see the speaker.

“Fine,” Georgie says. “Quiet. Bill, you coming?”

Bill puts his shoes down, and rounds the corner, all his senses on high alert.

The man standing next to Georgie is shorter, with darker hair. He looks strong, like he does something physical for a living, and he’s wearing a polo shirt that somehow shows off his abs.

He looks extremely familiar, and Bill stares dumbly for a long moment trying to place him. Georgie starts to look a little concerned, and the man looks down and back up at him, and says, “Hey, Bill. Sorry about your dad.”

The voice. That voice—

_ I’m having a fucking asthma attack! _

_ Kid in the alley, looks like someone killed him— _

_ Have you ever heard of a staph infection? _

“Eddie,” he says, and Eddie smiles, stepping forward.

Bill punches him in the face.

“I’m s-sorry,” Bill says for approximately the fifth time as Georgie wraps a bag of peas in a kitchen towel and hands it to Eddie. His eye is swollen, a tissue stuck in his nose to stop the bleeding.

Bill feels bad, but honestly, he still thinks it’s a reasonable response to finding out that one of your childhood best friends has had sex with your little brother.

“I j-just d-don’t understand,” Bill says. Georgie crosses his arms and leans against the wall, glaring at Bill, and Eddie sighs.

“It’s okay,” he says to Georgie, and Bill realizes with a start that he’s seeing what Georgie looks like when he’s feeling protective. It’s strange. He’s always been the protective one. “I get how you feel, okay? Believe me, I didn’t feel great about it at first.”

“What h-happened?” Bill asks.

Eddie sighs, dropping the bag of peas into his lap and looking at Bill, his gaze so intense that it’s almost frightening. “How much do you remember?” he asks.

Bill tries to think, and is blocked by a wave of pain. He presses two fingers to one temple, hard, and waits for the pain to go down before saying, “Not m-much. Just… images. M-Moments. When I try to r-remember more it h-h-hurts.”

“Maybe you’ll remember more in the morning,” Georgie says. “Eds, put the peas back, you shouldn’t look like a battered wife at work tomorrow.” Eddie rolls his eyes, but does what Georgie told him.

“Why can’t I r-remember?” Bill asks. Eddie and Georgie exchange a look, the kind of look that speaks to years of communicating without a word. It makes Bill feel strangely lonely.

“No one can remember,” Eddie finally says. “Look, you haven’t thought about Georgie in years, right?”

A hot flash of guilt shoots through Bill’s chest. “N-N-No, I haven’t.”

“It’s not your fault,” Eddie says. “Really — I can see you feeling like shit about it, but it’s not. There’s something in this town that did it on purpose to keep you away. The only reason I remember and Georgie remembers is that we stayed, and we forced ourselves to.”

“Why?” Bill isn’t sure exactly what he’s asking, but something tells him this is not the kind of knowledge anyone is happy having.

“Because someone has to,” Georgie says quietly, and walks away, up the stairs, which creak with every step.

“Sorry,” Eddie says, dropping the bag of peas again. “It’s just hard for him, seeing you again.”

“ _ Why _ ?” Bill’s head hurts and he feels like he knows the answer to every question he’s asking, but it’s hidden somewhere below the surface. Trying to find it feels impossible. “I d-don’t understand.”

“You will.” Eddie stands, and stretches. “Georgie’s making your bed.”

“What did I d-do?” Bill asks, and Eddie closes his eyes, a pained expression flashing across his face.

“It’s what you didn’t do,” Eddie says.

Bill opens his mouth to ask, and closes it.

He’s felt hideously guilty about forgetting his brother, but he hasn’t spent nearly enough time considering what it must have done to Georgie. He must have promised to visit, to call.

He didn’t. For almost a decade.

The guilt sinks like a stone into his stomach, worming its way into the flesh, where he’s sure it will stay.

The upstairs of Eddie and Georgie’s house is just two small bedrooms with ceilings that slant down, making the rooms feel smaller than they are. The guest room is full of spare car parts and has a small workstation for Georgie’s arm, and the bed is shoved haphazardly into the corner, made up for a guest. For Bill.

Bill puts his bag at the foot of the bed, strips down, and gets in. He can hear Eddie and Georgie across the hall, talking quietly, and the faint creaks of their bed as one of them gets in. It feels voyeuristic to listen, wrong and inappropriate, but he can’t stop himself, mentally charting each barely audible footfall.

He wonders if they’re going to have sex.

It’s a horrifying thought. Or at least the fact that he thought it is horrific. Bill turns and buries his face in his pillow, trying to think of absolutely anything else, but he can’t. It’s like a film unfurling in his mind, andimages and the powerful wave of lust running through his body are unstoppable.

He can see Georgie, his prosthetic arm set aside, his legs open for Eddie to settle between them. Eddie’s mouth sliding down Georgie’s cock, swallowing him whole, and Georgie’s hand grasping desperately at Eddie’s hair as he turns his head, whining into the pillow, his hips thrusting up into Eddie’s mouth. Eddie’s fingers sliding inside Georgie’s hole, stretching him open, ready to take Eddie’s cock, and Georgie gasping, begging for more—

There’s a knock on the guest room door, and Bill sits up so fast he nearly brains himself on the low roof. “Yeah?” he says, adjusting himself so that the beginnings of his erection are hidden.

Georgie opens the door just a little. “There’s more blankets in the dresser if you need them. It might be cold tonight.”

“G-Got it. Thanks.”

“See you in the morning.”

The door closes again, and Bill feels far, far too guilty to do anything but wait for his cock to soften and wait even longer for sleep.

Bill’s dreams are mercifully free of explicit content regarding Eddie and his brother.

Unfortunately, that’s where the memories choose to surface.

One by one, his friends rise from the depths of his memory. Eddie, who he’d only barely recognized and hadn’t been able to fully contextualize. Richie. Stan. Mike. Beverly. Ben.

The Losers Club, and their desperate fight to stay alive and protect anyone they could from the horrors of Derry. From It. From the clown.

By the time he wakes up, drenched in sweat and sick with horror, not all of it is clear. But it’s enough.

For a moment, he hates Georgie for bringing him back, and then he hates himself. He was the one who left Georgie here alone, and forgot him, consigned to the cobwebbed, distant part of his mind.

(It’s not a conscious decision, yet, but in retrospect, this was when he decided that he could never leave Derry again. It would only be in his rearview mirror if he had Georgie by his side and if he knew no one would ever die here again like those children.)

“You remembered,” Georgie says when Bill comes downstairs. Eddie is at work, and Bill had waited at the top of the stairs until he’d left, because he’s not sure he knows how to face Eddie and Georgie at the same time, knowing what he does now.

Especially after the images in his head last night. Bill buries his face in the cup of coffee Eddie hands to him and tries to think of absolutely anything else.

“Yeah,” Bill says, and sits down at the table. The local newspaper from that morning is splayed on the table, and it already has a dark ring in one corner where someone set a coffee on it. The front page is about possible renovations to the hospital, and in one corner, there’s a mention of a missing child. The town doesn’t notice. It doesn’t care.

As if he can read Bill’s mind, Georgie says, “We’re not like them.”

Bill looks up at him. Georgie continues a moment later. “We remember what happened. We did something about it back then. Everyone else was scared and tried to forget what they were scared of, but we knew, and we tried to fight it anyway. You remember, right?”

Bill didn’t. But as Georgie speaks, the gaps begin to fill in, starting off slow and coming more and more quickly.

(He remembers looking out the window as the rain poured down, and a sense of dread that wouldn’t leave him alone. A primal, deep terror seizing him by the throat and refusing to let him go. He remembers finding his shoes in a frenzy and running outside in his pajamas to find Georgie kneeling next to a sewer, talking to someone. Grabbing Georgie by the back of his rain jacket as he was about to reach down into the dark, and seeing a pair of bright yellow eyes staring up at them both. The red lips had curved into a smile, and the face had vanished.

He’d been terrified. No one had believed him, and he stopped insisting after the first week that he really did see a man with glowing eyes in the sewer; thirteen is well past the point that delusion is adorable. It had gotten him mercilessly bullied, and he’d retreated into himself. His stutter had gotten worse. But his friends had stuck by him, and he still had Georgie. He hadn’t been able to shake the certainty that he’d been painfully close to losing him.

And then the children had started vanishing, and the Losers Club came together, and they figured out a way to stop Its power. It: Pennywise, the clown, the monster, what made Derry what it is.

Some parts of it he can’t remember completely. The house on Neibolt is a blank spot until Eddie’s broken bone got set and they ran out to the street. He’d been holding Georgie tight, because Georgie had refused to stay with the others when they came in to help, and he’d stared the monster in the eyes, just like the rest of them.

Georgie was brave and strong and Bill had been terrified of losing him as the Losers fell apart. And then Pennywise had taken him and Bev.

This part is a blank spot, too. He doesn’t remember the journey down, aside from a few images of Henry Bowers’ blood-splattered face and a monstrous woman kissing Stan — kissing, or something else, he’s not sure. In the cavern, Bev and Georgie were floating, along with the decomposing bodies of Its other victims. Ben had kissed Bev to wake her, and someone — Richie, probably — had nervously joked that Bill might have to make out with his brother to wake him up. He hadn’t had to. Georgie had woken up as soon as Bill’s hand touched his bare skin after pulling him down.

The confrontation is there, in flashes. Richie shouting at him; Pennywise’s claws at his throat, begging to take him and let the others live. Let Georgie live. Georgie trying to fight It, and Pennywise catching him, looking Bill in the eyes, and telling him he should’ve taken the deal before plucking Georgie’s arm clean off his body like the wing off an insect.

Screaming. Blood, so much of it, dripping into the water, turning it red under the weak light. The others forcing Pennywise down as Bill tries to keep enough blood in Georgie’s body to keep him alive. Tying off the stump with his torn-up shirt, carrying Georgie out with Eddie’s help as Richie tried to guide Stan.

Hospital rooms, lies about Henry Bowers and improper use of police vehicles. No investigation. Georgie lived, somehow, and Bill vowed to always protect him.

He broke that promise. He remembers that now.)

Georgie is still talking. He cuts off, and snaps his fingers in front of Bill’s face.

“Bill? You okay?”

Bill answers by running to the kitchen sink to throw up. He can feel his hands slippery with Georgie’s blood, the fading life in his arms as he raced against time to carry Georgie out.

Somehow, he’d forgotten how it felt enough to leave Georgie behind.

He spits bile into the sink — luckily it’s clear of dishes — and feels a hand on his back, rubbing in small circles, an almost parental gesture. It doesn’t escape him that Georgie is comforting  _ him _ for his own failures. Another thing to feel guilty about.

“Bill. Turn around. Bill, come on.”

Slowly, Bill lifts his head and turns around. Georgie pulls him into a hug, and he lets himself be held. Georgie’s heartbeat is slow and steady against his chest.

That’s what matters the most, maybe. That Georgie lived. He kept Georgie alive, and Georgie survived without him for this long.

“It’s not your fault,” Georgie says softly after they’ve been hugging for maybe a bit too long. “This place… everyone forgets, in some way, because they need to forget if they want to survive. And Derry wanted you gone. All of the Losers. It’s just me and Eddie now, and we’ve both been tempted. Unsolicited job offers, more temptation every year. One time we found a lottery ticket in our mailbox and it was a winning number.”

“You w-w-won the l-l-l—” Bill winces and bites down on his tongue. It’s been a while since he hasn’t been able to get through a word. He remembers an old trick from high school: translating it into French.  _ Loterie _ . “The l-lottery?”

Georgie laughs softly, and pulls out of the hug. “Yeah. We put it into a retirement account and used some of it for a down payment on the house. Didn’t tell anyone. I don’t know what would’ve happened, but I don’t think it would’ve been good.”

“Is th-that how you f-f-finally got…” Bill gestures to Georgie’s arm, and Georgie nods, lifting it and examining it with familiarity.

“Eddie found it somewhere. He’s good at all that medical stuff.”

“He would be.” Now that they’re past the horrible trauma bit, there’s a slight elephant in the room. Bill turns around and rinses his mouth out in the sink to avoid it just a little longer.

He’s still not sure where his thoughts from last night came from, either. He didn’t feel that way when he left Derry, he knows.

Maybe it’s just Pennywise, trying to drive him away from Derry again. He feels ill again at the thought. His desires don’t feel evil, aside from the general morality of the situation; he just loves Georgie, in every way, more than he can ever put to words. There was always something a little codependent about them, until the last couple years of high school distracted him and pulled him away.

“Me and Eddie,” Georgie says, and stalls out. Bill walks past him and into the living room. He doesn’t want to do this standing up. They end up next to each other on the couch, listening as the beginnings of a rainstorm start to patter against the window.

“We needed each other,” Georgie manages after a few long moments. “He needed to get away from his mom, I needed to get out of… missing you. And we both needed to remember enough to stay here. We’ve been researching and preparing, but — that’s not the point.” Georgie takes a deep breath. “I want you here to bury dad.”

Bill winces. He’s almost forgotten the original purpose of this visit.

“But I want you to go, after. I know you’ll forget, and that’s okay. You’ll come back when It does, when we figure out how to kill it for good, but you deserve to be okay until then.”

“I w-won’t be,” Bill says. “N-Not w-without you.”

“You’ll be successful,” Georgie says. “Everyone else was, right? I’m sure you’ve heard of Ben the architect wunderkind and Beverly’s fashion design empire and Mike’s Pulizter. And your books are flying off the shelves. All of that will stop.”

“I c-c-can’t leave you h-here again,” Bill says. “I  _ c-can’t _ . If I ever r-r-remember again, I’ll n-never forgive m-myself.”

“You can’t stay,” Georgie says.

“I’m staying,” Bill says, and he’s never been more sure of anything in his life.

Georgie kisses him.

It catches Bill completely off guard. He almost pulls away before his brain resets and he pushes closer. Georgie tastes like coffee and cigarettes — Bill didn’t know he smoked — and his lips are chapped. His flesh hand cups Bill’s face as his prosthetic pulls Bill closer.

Bill never, ever wants to leave.

When he finally manages to pull away, he’s out of breath, and Georgie is flushed pink and beautiful. “You’re with Eddie,” Bill manages when he catches his breath.

Georgie smiles sheepishly. “We’ve, uh. We’ve talked about this.”

Bill has absolutely no idea how to process that information, except kissing Georgie again.

He can cope. He can deal with the memories, the pain, the horror of this town, if he’s here with Georgie and Eddie. And maybe, just maybe, they can find a way to fix it together.

Georgie was telling the truth, as it turns out. Eddie walks in on them kissing when he comes home for lunch, and Bill springs away like a guilty teenager while Georgie just grins and pulls Eddie into a kiss.

“Bill wants to stay,” Georgie says, and Eddie’s smile could light up the sun.

Eddie kisses Bill, and Georgie grabs his hand.

Bill never wants to let go of either of them.


End file.
